1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a technique, specifically apparatus and accompanying methods, for implementing in a networked client-server environment, such as the Internet, network-distributed advertising in which an advertisement is downloaded, from an advertising server to a web browser executing at a client computer, in a manner transparent to a user situated at the browser, and subsequently displayed, by that browser and on an interstitial basis, in response to a click-stream generated by the user to move from one web page to the next.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Currently, Internet usage, and particularly that of the World Wide Web (henceforth referred to as simply the "web"), is growing explosively, particularly as the number of web sites and users that have access to the Internet continue to rapidly and to a great extent, exponentially, expand.
In essence, after establishing a suitable network connection to the Internet, a user at a client computer can easily employ a graphical web browser, such as the Internet Explorer ("IE") browser presently available from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., to connect to a web site and then download a desired web page by simply supplying a specific address (known as a URL or uniform resource locator) of that page to the browser. The URL identifies both an address of the site, in terms of its Internet domain name, and a page of information at that site, in terms of its corresponding file name. Each web site stores at least one, and often times substantially more pages all arranged in a pre-defined hierarchy, generally beginning, at its root, with a so-called "home page". Each such page is written in HTML (hypertext markup language) form. A page, in this context, refers to content accessed via a single URL, including, e.g., text, graphics and other information specified in the HTML code for that particular page. Once a user supplies a URL of interest, the browser operated by that user sends an appropriate command, using a TCP/IP protocol (transmission control protocol/internet protocol), to a remote HTTP (hypertext transport protocol) server, located at the web site and which stores that page, to access and download a corresponding file for that page. In response, the server then sends, using the TCP/IP protocol, a stored file containing HTML code that constitutes that page back to the browser. As the file that constitutes the page itself is received by the browser, the browser interprets and executes the HTML code in that file to properly assemble and render the page on, e.g., a monitor to a user situated at the client computer. Such a page may itself contain HTML commands that reference other files, residing on the same or different web sites, which, when these commands are appropriately interpreted and executed by the browser, result in those files being downloaded and their resulting content properly assembled by the browser into the rendered page. Once all the content associated with the page is rendered, the user can then position his(her) mouse cursor on a suitable hypertext link, button or other suitable user input field (whichever here implements a "hotlink") displayed on that page and then, through, e.g., a mouse "click", effectively download a file for and render another desired page in succession until the user has finished his(her) visit to that site, at which point, the user can transition through a hotlink to a page at another site, and so forth. A hotlink specifies a complete web address of an associated page, including a domain name of its hosting web site at which that page is situated. Consequently, by simply and successively positioning and "clicking" his(her) mouse at an appropriate hotlink for each one of a number of desired web pages, the user can readily retrieve an HTML file for each desired page in succession from its corresponding web site and render that page, and, by doing so, essentially effortlessly jump from site to site, regardless of where those sites are physically located.
Ever since their introduction several years ago, HTML and accompanying browser software, now including, e.g., attendant programming languages such as Java and JavaScript languages ("Java" is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems in Mountain View, Calif.; "JavaScript" is a trademark of Netscape Communications in Mountain View, Calif.), have undergone rather rapid and continual evolution. A major purpose of which has been and continues to be to provide web page authors with an ability to render increasingly rich content through their pages and, as a result, heighten a "user experience" for those users who visit these pages. Consequently, web pages are no longer limited to relatively simple textual displays--as occurred with early versions of HTML and browser software, but can now encompass even full-motion multimedia presentations and interactive games that use rather sophisticated graphics.
The simplicity of browsing the web coupled with the relative low-cost of accessing the Internet, and the relative ease through which a web site can be established are collectively fueling unparalleled growth and diffusion of the Internet itself, web sites and the Internet user community throughout the world. In that regard, by establishing web sites, merchants, vendors and other information providers have an unparalleled opportunity, basically unheard of as little as 5-10 years ago, to reach enormous numbers of potential consumers--regardless of where these consumers reside--at costs far less than previously thought possible. Moreover, given the staggering amount and wide diversity of information currently available on the web, web browsing is becoming so popular a past-time for sufficient numbers of individuals that browsing is beginning to divert significant viewership away from traditional forms of mass entertainment, such as television and cable. While such diversion is relatively small at present, it is likely to rapidly grow. Moreover, given the ease and convenience with which users, situated at their personal computers and with basically nothing more complicated than a few mouse clicks, can effectively interact with remote web sites, electronic commerce, through which goods and services are ordered through the Internet without ever visiting a physical store, is rapidly emerging as a significant sales medium. This medium is likely to significantly challenge and possibly, over a relatively short time, may even alter traditional forms of retailing.
Given the wide and ever-growing reach of the web as a source of consumer information and the increasing consumer acceptance of electronic commerce, advertisers have clearly recognized the immense potential of the web as an effective medium for disseminating advertisements to a consuming public.
Unfortunately, conventional web-based advertising, for various practical reasons--some being technical in nature and others relating to a nature of traditional web advertisements themselves, has generally yielded unsatisfactory results and thus has usually been shunned by most large advertisers. In that regard, several approaches exist in the art for implementing web based advertisements. However, all suffer serious limitations of one form or another that have sharply restricted their desirability and use.
Currently, a predominant format, referred to as a "banner", for a web advertisement takes the form of a rectangular graphical display situated, typically at a fixed location, in a rendered web page. A banner, which can be static or animated, can be situated anywhere within a rendered web page but most often is situated at a top or bottom, or along a vertical edge of that page. A banner, depending on its size, can extend across an entire page width or length, and usually contains, in a graphical eye-catching form, a name of a product or service being advertised. Increasingly, a banner for a given product or service implements a hotlink to enable a consumer to "click-through" the banner (i.e., generate a mouse click on the banner) in order to transition, via his browser, to a web site maintained by a corresponding advertiser and, from that site, fetch a web page to provide additional information regarding that product or service. Hence, the consumer could easily obtain more information by a click-through; while an advertiser, monitoring counts of such click-throughs that occur in a given period of time, could gain feedback on the effectiveness of the corresponding banner.
A banner is generally produced by properly embedding specific HTML code for that banner within the HTML coding for a given web page in which the banner is to appear. A client browser, as it interprets and sequentially executes the HTML code for a fetched page, will, in turn, compile and execute the embedded code for the banner and hence display the banner, as part of a rendered page and at a specified location thereon.
In implementing a banner, whether static or even animated, its HTML coding generally involved downloading an appropriate file, for that banner, to a client browser. The file may be stored on the same server that stores the HTML file for the page, or accessed from a remote server. The file may contain a graphic itself, such as in a GIF (graphic interchange format) file, or a Java applet which, once interpreted and executed by the browser, generates and renders a desired animated graphic. This file, whether it be a graphic or applet, requires time to download and must be downloaded and assembled by the browser on the page prior to that page being fully rendered. The download time for that file, particularly as it increases in size, clearly, a priori, lengthens a time interval during which that page would completely download, thereby extending the time to fully render the page, including the banner, after a user transitioned to that page. Channel bandwidth to a client computer (e.g., personal computer--PC), such as that provided through a modem connection, is often rather limited. Consequently, if the file size for the banner were relatively large--as would certainly be the case for relatively "rich" content, e.g., audio or video content, the delay in downloading such a file over such a limited bandwidth connection could be excessive, and consequently highly frustrating to the user. Hence, a user would likely wait a considerable amount of time before all the page components for multimedia content are fully downloaded to permit that page to be rendered. Such delay, if encountered during a page transition, can be rather frustrating to a user, even to the point at which the user, just to end his(her) waiting, will prematurely terminate the download and transition to another page. Therefore, in an effort to preserve an appropriate "editorial experience" for a user, content suppliers sharply limit the file size, of such banners to be rendered on their pages, in order to minimize page download and hence latency times.
Unfortunately, such restricted file sizes effectively limit the richness of the content of a banner to a rather simplistic advertisement--even with animation. Thus, banners often failed, as advertisers soon recognized by relatively low click-through counts, to attract sufficient viewer attention to justify their use and expense.
In an effort to overcome the content limitation associated with banners, the art teaches the use of a different advertising modality: so-called "interstitial" advertisements. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,305,195 (issued to A. J. Murphy on Apr. 19, 1994--hereinafter the "Murphy" patent) which discloses the concept of using interstitial advertisements though not in the context of web advertising. As described in the Murphy patent, pre-stored advertisements are displayed at specific intervals on each one of a group of networked ATM (automated transaction machines) terminals. In particular, the advertisements are downloaded, either directly or via a server, from a remote computer and locally stored on each such terminal and subsequently displayed on that terminal while it waits for a response, from a remote mainframe transaction server, to a transaction initiated at that terminal.
Generally speaking and with specific reference to web advertising, interstitial ads are displayed in an interval of time that occurs after a user has clicked on a hot-link displayed by a browser to retrieve a desired web page but before that browser has started rendering that page. Such an interval, commonly referred to as an "interstitial", arises for the simple reason that a browser requires time, once a user clicks on a hotlink for a new page, to fetch a file(s) from a remote web server(s) for that particular page and then fully assemble and render that page. The length of an interstitial interval, which is quite variable, is governed by a variety of factors, including, e.g., a number of files required to fully render the new page and the size of each such file, and network and server congestion and attendant delays occurring when the user activated the hotlink.
Interstitial web advertising is taught in, e.g., U.S. Pats. 5,737,619 and 5,572,643 (both of which issued to D. H. Judson but on Apr, 7, 1998 and Nov. 5, 1996, respectively--hereinafter the "Judson"patents). The Judson patents disclose the concept of embedding an advertisement, as an information object, in a web page file in such a manner that the object will remain hidden and not displayed when the file is executed to render the page. Rather than being displayed, the information object is locally cached by the browser during execution of the code for that page. Then, during a transition initiated by user activation of a hotlink to move from that page to a next successive page, i.e., during an interstitial, the browser accesses the advertisement from local cache and displays it until such time as that next successive page is downloaded and rendered. See also, published International patent application WO 97/07656 (to E. Barkat et al and published on Mar. 6, 1997) which teaches the concept of "polite" downloading. Here, a browser, on a local computer (e.g., a client PC) downloads, from a remote advertising system server and ostensibly as a background process, file(s) for a web advertisement only during those intervals when bandwidth utilization of a communication channel (link) connected to the browser is less than a pre-established threshold. Such "polite" downloading is intended to minimally interfere with other communication applications, then executing on the client PC, which will utilize the link. The browser displays the downloaded ad(s) to the user only after the user has not interacted, as detected by a conventional screen saver process, with his(her) PC for a predefined period of time, such as by neither moving a mouse nor depressing a key on a keyboard during that period. The server selects those advertisements for download to the client PC based on a user-ID and preference information of the user, who is then situated at that PC, and configuration information of that PC, which, when a connection is established between the client PC and the server, the client PC uploads to the server. Though the files associated with an interstitial advertisement can be large, these files are advantageously fetched by a client browser during those intervals when otherwise the browser would be idle and hence bandwidth utilization of its network connection would be relatively low. Such "idle times" would occur, in the absence of processing an interstitial ad, after the browser has fully rendered a web page and a user is viewing the page but has not yet clicked on a hotlink to transition to another page. During such an idle time, the browser would simply wait for further user input.
By reducing, if not eliminating, problems, inherent in banners and engendered by download latency, interstitial web advertisements, by employing idle time downloading and local caching, provide a theoretical promise of conveying very rich media content with a pleasing "user experience". However, interstitial advertisements, as conventionally implemented, have serious practical deficiencies which have severely limited their use.
Conventional interstitial, as well as other forms of current, web advertisements--here not unlike banners--rely on embedding HTML ad code, as, e.g., a separate non-displayable object, within HTML coding for a web page. Unfortunately, this approach, inherent in that taught by the Judson patents, can be inflexible and expensive for an advertiser to implement and particularly later should that advertiser, for whatever reason, seek to modify his(her) ad content. In particular and presently, ad coding is manually inserted into each and every content web page that is to carry advertising. Consequently, insertion of increasingly sophisticated embedded advertising, such as multi-media or video or audio, in existing web site content requires a large investment in terms of human resources, time and cost as web sites, particularly large sites, increase a number of content pages available for advertising. In that regard, where a banner usually required insertion of, e.g., a single line of HTML code, content rich advertisements, such as those now implemented by parameterized embedded Java advertising applets, often consist of an entire page of coding and hence require far more extensive and increasingly labor-intensive and costly insertions. Moreover, over time, advertisers do change their ads such as by replacing one ad with a totally new version. However, once HTML ad coding is embedded within a number of web pages, it can be quite impractical and rather costly for an advertiser to access each and every page in which his(her) ad coding has been inserted and then manually change the ad coding, as desired. The impracticality and attendant cost compound if these pages are copied to other web sites and hence diffuse through the Internet.
Given these deficiencies, the art teaches a concept of implementing web advertising through using so-called "push" technology. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,740,549 (issued to J. P. Reilly et al on Apr. 14, 1998-- hereinafter the "Reilly et al" patent). In essence and as described in the Reilly et al patent, a client PC, through execution of a "push" application program (called "administration manager"), establishes a network connection with an information server, i.e., a "push" web server, typically during off-hours, such as in the late evening or early morning, or at a predefined interval (e.g., every four hours). The information server then downloads, i.e., "pushes", to the administration manager, content files, such as for advertisements and/or other predefined information, that are to be played to the user sometime later. The administration manager, i.e., the "push" application, in turn, stores all the "pushed" content files into a local database (referred to as the "information database") on a local hard disk and, in response to instructions received from the information server, deletes those previously "pushed" content files which have already been displayed. The administration manager also maintains a user profile, which specifies user preferences as to the specific advertising and/or other information (s)he wants to receive, in the information database. As such, through each connection, the information server, by selecting content from its database relative to preferences specified in the user profile, attempts to "push" fresh content to the client PC that is likely to be of interest to the user but without duplicating that which was already displayed. Stored "pushed" content is later displayed, using a data viewer, either on user demand or during those times when the user is not interacting with the system, here too detected by a conventional screen saver procedure.
While push technology reduces download latency, by shifting downloads to occur at off-hours, this technology also suffers serious drawbacks which have greatly restricted its practical acceptance.
In particular, to access "pushed" content, a user must initially download and install to his(her) client PC a separate, platform-specific, software application program, as well as subsequent updates to that program as new push capabilities are released by the manufacturer of the program. Unfortunately, these application programs can often extend to tens of megabytes in length. Since typical Internet users establish modem connections to their Internet service providers, these users will find that downloading these relatively large program files, even in compressed form, will consume an inordinate amount of time and is generally impractical while (s)he is actively using his(her) client PC. Consequently, these users are constrained to purchasing, at some cost, an off-the-shelf version of the application program or downloading that program, typically at no cost for the program itself, at off-hours, when network congestion is relatively light. Furthermore, while some efforts are underway in the art to automatically "push" and install incremental software updates to a client PC, thus eliminating a need for a user to manually do so, the user still faces the burden associated with the initial download and installation of the "push" application program.
In addition, "push" application programs continue to increase in size, often considerably, as they provide added capabilities to a user. Downloading and then regularly updating a push application will reduce, sometimes considerably, the amount of disk space available to the user on his(her) client PC. Furthermore, "push" applications rely on periodically "pushing" large quantities of media content from a push server to the client PC and storing that content on the hard disk of that PC pending subsequent display. This content, depending on its volume, can consume inordinate amounts of hard disk space. Furthermore, advertisers have discovered, not surprisingly, that relatively few PC users will undertake any affirmative action, such as by downloading and installing an application program--almost regardless of its size, to receive advertisements and other such information.
Faced with these practical, and rather acute, deficiencies inhering in web advertising conventionally provided on either an interstitial or "push" basis, web advertisers have apparently relegated their efforts to displaying their advertisements on a banner-like approach, through real-time downloading and rendering of advertising HTML files. Here, the advertising files are sited on remote web servers, rather than being embedded within given web page HTML files, with appropriate HTML tags, which reference the ad files, being embedded into the web page files themselves. Such a tag specifies when and where, within the page, an advertisement is to appear.
To surmount the latency problems inherent in such banner-like advertisements, various proprietary media formats have appeared in the art. These formats employ increasingly sophisticated data compression, sometimes in conjunction with video and/or audio streaming. Rather than waiting for a media file to fully download prior to its being rendered, streaming permits content in a "streamed" media file to be presented in real-time to the user as that content arrives at his(her) client browser. While this approach clearly provides enhanced richness in content over that obtainable through a conventional banner and thus can heighten a "user experience", it nevertheless relies, to its detriment, on a continuous real-time network connection existing to a remote web server.
Unfortunately, any network or server congestion which stops the download, even if temporary, can suspend, i.e., freeze, or totally halt the "streamed" media presentation to the user prior to its completion. This interruption, if noticeable and sufficiently long, will likely frustrate the user and degrade the "user experience".
In spite of these drawbacks, particularly with respect to interstitial advertisements and push technology, and apparently for lack of a better alternative, most web advertising currently in use employs real-time streaming of graphic files with their content being rendered by the browser.
Web advertisements, like other forms of mass advertising, do generate revenue, often in the form of an on-going stream of payments to the host of the ads, in this case web site owners. Accurate user accounting is essential to ensure that an advertiser is not over- or under-charged given an extent to which an ad is actually disseminated. Hence, these payments are often tied to a function of the number of web users whom the ad reached. But with web advertisements, accurately ascertaining that number has been difficult and problematic at best, and, given a basic technique employed to do so, manifestly error-prone, thereby causing unreliable user counts and erroneous ad charges.
In particular and as conventionally employed, delivery of a web advertisement, such as, e.g., a streamed ad, is logged as a "user impression" at a web server at an instant an advertising file(s), e.g., a streamed file, is served, rather than after the browser has completely rendered the advertisement to the user. Unfortunately, serving these ad files does not guarantee that these files will be ultimately and completely rendered by a client browser to a user. Consequently, web server generated "user impression" counts can be grossly over--or under-stated. For example, if a user navigates to a new content page after an advertisement has started playing but before that advertisement completes and, by doing so, prematurely terminated the advertisement, a full impression is nevertheless logged--erroneously--since that advertisement was completely served. Additional errors arise if a proxy server is situated between multiple client PCs situated on an intranet or a local area network (LAN) and a web advertisement server situated on the Internet (or other insecure public network). In this case, a request from one of the client PCs for the advertisement files will be routed to the proxy server, which, in turn, will direct that request onward to the advertisement web server. The latter, in response to the request, will serve one complete copy of the advertisement files to the proxy server. The resulting fetched advertisement files will be locally cached in the proxy server and, from there, provided to the requesting client PC. Should any of the other client PCs request the same files, the proxy server will provide these files, totally unbeknownst to the web server, from its local cache rather than directing a request from that other PC back to the web server. Hence, the web server will be totally oblivious to each additional instance in which the proxy server accessed the ad files from its local cache and disseminated the advertisement to any client PC other than that which first requested the ad. Inasmuch as some intranets situated behind a proxy server(s) can be rather extensive with tens or hundreds of thousands of individual client PCs, server-based user impression accounting based on copies delivered by a web server may, owing to the presence of proxy servers, be inordinately low and result in significant under-charges to the advertiser. As of yet, no solution apparently exists in the art that can provide accurate counts of "user impressions" of web advertisements.
Other conventional approaches aimed at reducing latency times associated with downloading content files through relatively slow speed communication links, e.g., modem connections, have involved development and use of new facilities within various programming languages. These approaches, most notably involving the Java and JavaScript programming languages, while helpful, still cause inefficient use of available link bandwidth and still constrain the size of the content files. These limitations arise from premature terminations of preloaded files whenever a user transitions to a new web page. Specifically, with these approaches, if a user activates a hotlink to transition to a new web page while an ad file is being downloaded but before the downloading has completed, then the downloading simply stops. The downloading will need to be re-started, but from the beginning of the file, the next time that particular ad file is requested. Hence, the time and bandwidth that has then been expended in downloading part of that ad file is completely wasted. In practice, many users tend to quickly navigate through a series of web pages until they reach a desired destination. Consequently, advertisers are constrained to again minimize content file sizes and hence "richness" of their advertisements in an effort to decrease a number of premature terminations per unit time and in doing so reduce latency caused by downloading duplicate sections of the same ad file. Therefore, these approaches have generally proven to be wholly unsatisfactory.
In view of the fundamental drawbacks associated with various web based advertising techniques known in the art, interstitial web advertising appears to hold the most promise of all these techniques. Yet, the limitations inherent in conventional implementations of interstitial advertising have effectively prevented this form of web advertising from effectively fulfilling its promise. Moreover, the deficiencies inherent in all known web advertising techniques have, to a significant extent, collectively inhibited the use of web advertising in general.
Thus, a pressing need exists in the art for a new web-based interstitial advertising technique which does not suffer from infirmities associated with such interstitial advertising techniques known in the art.
In that regard, this new technique should preferably not embed advertising HTML files within a web page. If this could be accomplished, then advantageously such a technique would likely provide considerable economies to advertisers in saved labor, time and cost in terms of both inserting advertisements into web page files, and later changing any of those advertisements. In addition, such a new technique should preferably function in a manner that is substantially, if not totally, transparent to a user and which neither inconveniences nor burdens that user. In particular, this new technique should preferably not require a user to download and install on his(her) PC a separate application program, let alone any update to it, specifically to receive web advertising, or perform any affirmative act, other than normal web browsing, to receive such advertising. Furthermore, this new technique should preferably be platform independent and, by doing so, operate with substantially any web browser on substantially any PC. Also, this new technique, when in use, should preferably not consume excessive hard disk space on a client PC. Moreover, to provide a pleasing "user experience", this new technique should render an ad fully and without any interruptions that might otherwise result from network and/or server congestion. Lastly, this new technique should provide proper accounting to an advertiser by accurately and validly ascertaining user impressions of fully rendered advertisements.
We believe that if such a new web-based interstitial advertising technique could be provided, then this technique, which should be both effective and desirable, may well achieve broad support and use by advertisers and acceptance by web users; hence, substantially expanding the use of web-based advertising in general.